Wednesday I dropped $100 on new walking shoes — the first new shoes I’d bought in probably two years. Saturday, I put those shoes to their first major test — a walk from my apartment in Woodley Park to Congressional Cemetery, located on the west bank of the Anacostia in what can only be described as East East Capitol Hill. I’d never been to Congressional Cemetery before, and wanted to scratch it off my “to see” list.

Of course, by the time I got there — about two and a half hours, and six and a half miles — I was pretty exhausted, so instead of an indepth exploration, I walked around a bit, rested, and then was off again. My plan was to walk to Farragut Square and catch a bus home, but instead, I caught the Metro at Capital South, giving me a total walk for the day of about eight miles. Not too bad. Some of the gravestones I took photos of are below.

And then I had sort of an awkward encounter. I was a few blocks from Capital Hill South when a woman walking two Corgis turned onto the street ahead of me. Who doesn’t love Corgis, right? So I called out to her, “They’re beautiful!” and asked if I could take their picture. Which became super awkward when she posed, and I took a photo … of her Corgis. So, basically, I just became the cat-calling creep … who then ignored the pretty lady in favor of her dogs. I don’t think either one of us walked away from that feeling uplifted, and I just feel … mortified. I think I ruined her day. My deepest apologies, if you are reading this: you are lovely, and your puppies are lovely.

New Star Wars trailer! New Star Wars trailer! It’s so easy to get caught up in it — OLD HAN and STILL LOOKING YOUNG CHEWBACCA — it’s easy to forget how much positive press The Phantom Menacereceived, almost two decades ago.

But I will remain optimistic until December.

(Also, does it seem weird to anyone else that Chewbacca basically doesn’t age?)

I lost my job a year ago today. No fear: I’ve been reemployed since September 2nd. As a fortuitious coincidence, the week before I went from being gainfully employed to being gainfully desperately looking for work, I bought an Xbox One and two games: Battlefield 4 and Titanfall. As much as I wanted to love Titanfall — where you control really cool mecha and stomp your enemies from the map — I actually wound up playing a hell of a lot more Battlefield 4, which is, for me, anyway, one of the more challenging shooters out there.

Sunday night I was playing on Pearl Market, which, if you’ve ever played BF4’s expansions, you know as a chaotic map of narrow alleys and wide streets, steep stairways and windows overlooking the field of combat, and roofs towering over all. In game death is all around you, and this round, sadly, we were losing — and it was not remotely close. Still, everyone on my squad was using their microphones, and we were coordinating quite well.

And then this guy joined. And instead of, y’know, “There’s a dude crouched on that ledge” or “Let’s push on objective A” or even “THEY’RE EVERYWHERE WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE” …

… he starts with, “What’s your name? Where are you from?” and then the next thing I know, his grandfather’s on the microphone explaining how they just got broadband internet in his remote Alaska village and he’s paying $300 goddamn bucks a month for it and I’m just staring eyes wide as I try to slay our opposition because, dammit, I love this map, and very few servers have it on rotation anymore, and what the hell is this?

It’s the new age/sex/location. That’s clearly what it is. Which for you young whippersnappers, is what you used to type into an AOL chatroom. It was the text-version of today’s Tinder.

Currently Shenanigan’s Irish Pub, the green structure that reeks of fake-Irish has previously been McNasty’s, Angry Inch, and, taking a page from Harry Potter, the Leaky Faucet. It’s also one of the 25-Douchiest-Bars in DC, per Complex. I don’t know if Julia’s Empanadas put up this sign recently or not, but I only noticed it today: pointing and laughing at their neighbor’s name change, it reads: “We don’t change often/We got it right the first time.”

Klingle Road runs west to east across upper northwest Washington, DC, with many interruptions: it starts just a little east of MacArthur Boulevard, branching off of Macomb, and runs into Arizona. It resumes on the other side of Battery Kemble Park, and runs here from Foxhall Road to New Mexico Avenue, a whole two blocks. It resumes for a much shorter stint — about a block — between 39th and Massachusetts. If it continued from here, after a block, it would then run through the National Cathedral’s Close. But it doesn’t, resuming its onward march from 34th Street to Woodley Road, where it sort of continues, but only if you turn and travel for a short distance on Woodley before making a left. Here it ends again — sort of.

An ugly gate, decorated with “Road Closed” and “Pedestrians Prohibited” signs, bars the way. It’s possible to enter the closed portion of Klingle by making your connection through the Tregaron Conservancy Trails, which have no signs barring pedestrian access, if you feel more comfortable.

Imagine a road running through a flood zone which has not been maintained for a quarter of a century. Portions of Klingle, especially where I first entered, looked as if they could be used again almost immediately. On other sections, however, fully 3/4ths of the road had eroded and collapsed into the Klingle Tributary.

My personal favorite part of my exploration was where Klingle runs under the Klingle Valley Bridge/Connecticut Avenue Bridge. I’ve lived in DC for almost seven years and have walked across that bridge I can’t even count how many times.

There were sections of Klingle where the road had practically become one with the stream, and I had to jump from dry pavement to dry pavement — as I’m a bit on the heavy side, this probably looked as awkward as it felt, and it felt like I was going to slip and go down hard and wet (that’s what she said?).

This was one of the few examples of the remaining street markings.

After exploring Klingle, I meandered through Rock Creek Park to Adams Morgan and walked downtown. I noticed quite a few people looking at my chest — maybe because they were admiring my man boobs, or maybe because they really loved my Dark Lords t-shirt. Or maybe both!

“Is this the Blue Line?” we wondered, my friend (also my neighbor) and I, Saturday night at Metro Center waiting for a train to Virginia to attend a friend’s housewarming.

The train itself just said Special. We’d been waiting for ten minutes. There was a Silver Line train pulling in when we’d arrived, and a few minutes later an Orange Line train. The board, where incoming trains are listed with their estimated time of arrival, said the next Blue Line to Franconia-Springfield was still eleven minutes away.

This was potentially the first Blue Line train.

Let’s go, we decided. Even it was Orange or Silver, we could get off at a later station and at least be a bit closer to our destination.

“Is this the Blue Line?” we asked a group of four college-aged kids already seated. Perhaps thinking we were tourists — despite the Maryland sweatshirt I was wearing, strongly implying that I’m a local — one of them proclaimed that if the train didn’t proceed to Arlington Cemetery after Rosslyn, we’d know it wasn’t Blue.

And we’d have to choose: get off and wait for the Blue Line train eleven minutes behind us, or risk that we were actually on an Orange or Silver Line train, and have to backtrack.

McPherson Square and Farragut North. No on board announcements.

My brain kicking into motion, I pulled up the Metro app on my phone as we pulled into Foggy Bottom. Opened the Rosslyn station. The only Blue Line train coming was headed in the opposite direction. Decision time was coming: jump off at Rosslyn? Or take a gamble?

And then: an announcement – “Next stop, Rosslyn, final transfer point to the Orange and Silver Lines.”

And the glorious realization – that announcement would only come on a Blue Line train! A special unmarked Blue Line train …

And our friend’s housewarming was amazing. She has the best cats ever. They’re like big fluffy pillows who say “Hello stranger! I will jump into your arms and rub my face all over your face forever and forever!” And then, because it took us an hour and fifteen minutes to go from out apartments to Woodley Park to Braddock Road to our friend’s place, we caught a cab home. I may have had a cat stuffed under my sweatshirt.

As I do every election, I went to my polling place and voted last night.

One of the measures I voted for was Initiative 71, the legalization of marijuana. The thing with being a resident of Washington, DC though is that even with our local government — our ANCs and our city council and our mayor — Congress can basically overrule everything, because we’re the Original Continental Colony.

And while I’m sure some Republicans (Rand Paul, right? He’d be okay with it) are cool with the denizens of Washington, DC governing themselves, others feel we just can’t handle that responsibility. Oh Maryland, my Maryland, why do you keep electing Andy Harris? (You’ll remember: he’s the guy who ran against Obamacare and then threw a hissy-fit about his own government provided health insurance taking a month to kick in).

If you’re wondering why there are videos on the news and social media of people dumping buckets of ice water over their head, they’re doing it to raise awareness about ALS, more popularly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The idea is that, if challenged, you either dump a bucket of ice water over your head, or you donate money to ALS research. Considering ALS has raised $17 million during the same period where last year they raised $1.3 million, I’d call this a rousing success.

The Ice Bucket Challenge – the charitable cause to raise money for ALS – is the current rage chilling American spines. The challenge offers participants two choices: 1) Donate $100 to help fight Lou Gehrig’s disease or 2) Dump a bucket of cold ice water over their heads. Many participants do both.

According to the New York Times, more than 1.2 million videos of people dumping water on their head have been posted to Facebook. I decided to calculate how much water has been consumed in the process.

If an average bucket contains 4 gallons of water, about 5 million gallons of water have dunked heads from coast to coast. That’s the equivalent of about 120,000 baths or, in weather terms, over half an inch of rain falling on a 300 acre slab of land. Think of a summer downpour dousing the National Mall, or for west-coasters, Disneyland.

Four gallons of water poured over one’s head does not exactly equal a national emergency, although if you live in California where there’s a drought, it should probably get you beaten to a pulp. Per the Washington Sanitary Commission, here are some common activities and how many gallons of water they cost:

So basically, the water cost is easily recaptured in shortening shower times, reducing the amount of times you flush (I know, yucky), or using the dishwasher or laundry machines less. These, honestly, are all things we should be doing because fresh water is a precious resource and we need to treat it as such. In this case, I just find it difficult to get worked up about.

I went to catch the early show of Lucy this morning at Mazza Galleria. Excepting the woman who brought her kid to the movie and then realized this wasn’t a non-violent film and raced out (as opposed to all of Luc Besson’s other children-appropriate films such as The Professional or La Femme Nikita, which teach valuable trades), the film was fun, interesting and strange: picture a science-fiction themed shoot-’em’up nature documentary. That’s really the closest I can come: one moment, people are getting shot, the next moment, oh look, it’s a cheetah chasing a deer. Worth waiting to see on DVD or streaming, though.

In continuing my theory that Hot Tub Time Machine is basically Back to the Future rebooted with a hot tub time machine instead of a Delorean time machine, John Cusack is filling the Crispin Glover role by not returning, as with BTTF 2 the sequel goes to the future, and the second sequel (appears to be set up at the end of the trailer) will apparently take us well back in time to the War for Independence.

This winter’s snowfall may not quite equal the epic double-blizzard of 2009/2010, but it has been the heaviest snow since that winter. Early March, and snow is falling yet again. I love it. I love snow, I love being inside and warm while snow falls, I love walking around in the snow.

And I’m fortunate, because my employer closed for the day. I think most employers did. Well, most 9-5 employers. And I’m fortunate because I still get paid for today. Imagine my shock when a person I follow on Twitter expressed outrage (feigned, I hope) that his local IHOP was closed.

Because those restaurant workers won’t get paid for today, even though the buses aren’t running, and even though the roads are awful. I’ve got the local CBS news on (yay WUSA9!) and one of the anchors, speaking about traffic accidents, said, “there are so many, I can’t even start to talk about them.” My paraphrasing.

And office workers on Twitter are outraged that they can’t have pancakes for breakfast. Pretty soon, Twitter will be overrun with outrage over bars that have closed, or retail stores that haven’t opened.

Because somehow, while it is too dangerous for office workers to trudge into work, it somehow isn’t too dangerous for restaurant and retail staff to do the same?

I wonder how many of the same people complaining about a closed local establishment are outraged by the consumer culture that dictates stores opening on Thanksgiving Day or Black Friday? Hard to see a difference here.